


Pavor Nocturnus

by ViciousInnocence



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Dark, Fear, Nightmare, Other, Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 01:40:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13870383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViciousInnocence/pseuds/ViciousInnocence
Summary: It's just another day in Paddy's Pub.





	Pavor Nocturnus

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: panic attacks, bad thoughts etc - it's a nightmare.
> 
>  
> 
> It's just another day in Paddy's Pub.

Except something’s wrong, something’s deeply wrong here. He can feel it tight in his chest and stifling the pores on his skin like invasive humidity.

The bar remains empty, the socket over their pool table continuing to flicker on and off, with an eerie click that Dennis can feel like a single anxious nerve.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

On-Off.

On-Off.

For some unexplainable reason it’s making him feel nauseous, but he can’t look away. There’s an explanation for this, he thinks.

They’d asked Charlie to fix that socket weeks, if not months, ago. Trust Charlie to make a completely botched effort of it.

Then it hits him.

He finds himself scanning round the room.

The light stops twitching. The bar remains empty.

The same clutter of seats near the central column that Mac had refused to tidy up yesterday still stand where he’d left them, in an un-coordinated set-up of mismatched stools. The seats should have provided a small source of comfort, but the longer he stares at them, he finds a creeping sense of anxiety clawing up his spine, prodding him sharply between the vertebrae, telling him he’d be a lot happier if he went and straightened the stools out.

_Forget about them._

Dennis finds himself swallowing uneasily. He licks his lips a little, noticing his mouth is dry, bringing a hand to trace down along his jaw, massaging at the front of his neck.

There’s a large lump forcing it’s way up his throat – not vomit or bile, a sensation like a large frog pushing it’s slimy body up through his oesophagus, it’s little feet scrambling near his tonsils trying to force its way to freedom, slipping every time.

Quickly he finds himself walking towards the bathrooms, shoving himself through the door into the small room, as if he could run away from the feeling, as if, if he could find someone else in here he might be able to get out alive.

The thought pierces through him like a thin needle through his heart, providing a sweeping chill through his ribs, a cool sweat breaking out on his skin. No matter how hard he tries to banish the fear, it won’t leave him. It grips him instead.

He moves faster, hairs rolling onto end even as he’s violently pushing open cubicles with his forearm, the thudding of the cheap wooden doors shaking the ramshackle filthy dividers, revealing only marker scrawled walls, yellow waters and the rising smell of damp.

The stench of the cubicles and urinals doesn’t usually bother him. It’s always been there, like the scratches on his range rover or Maureen’s decaying dead-tooth.  But his fear is causing him to fixate, the familiarity of Paddy’s is swallowed up by its own imperfections.

He checks every cubicle, the doors swinging in his wake, wafting the stale air around as they hang limply off their ill-fitted hinges. The acrid smell is stinging his nostrils, conjuring to mind the image of the dog carcass they’d found that summer like a reflex. He remembers the position of its body laying splayed on the ground, its eyes picked out by the crows and its mouth hanging open in a now permanent cry of pain. Its swollen red skin burnt by the sun, the body itself slowly liquefying amongst a puddle of its own fluids.

For one horrific second he catches sight of the corpse again in the corner, but pausing to look again it’s merely a mop. With a browning head, filled with filth, hairs and ratty matted fibres dripping towards the floor, the dog’s ghost haunts him.

Suddenly the atmosphere of the bathroom seems like a bad omen. He can feel the hairs underneath his shirt rolling onto end, it makes him shiver involuntarily. Dennis feels like he’s being watched.

The visions of death scare him back into the bar, stumbling blindly into the furniture.

One of the bar stools falling gracelessly to the floor with loud bang, Dennis recoiling in shock as if he’d been shot.

He must look a sorry sight, hunched over, clutching at his shirt. But when the stool fell he thought he had heard Mac’s voice shout out.

He’s tearing up the back office as if the place is on fire and he needs to find everything worth saving before it’s too late. With desperation only human trauma can instil he’s grasping at handfuls of paper and flinging them aside, as if Sweet Dee or Charlie could really be hiding underneath their overdue government tax and rent forms piled high in the drawers. They flutter in the air like litter in a harsh gust of breeze, but they hit the ground in silence Dennis feels harder than the sound of the drawers hitting the hard floor.

This fresh silence from the minutes of turmoil give way to a new thought, and a new feeling, a deepening sense of dread burying itself deep into his core.

This feeling. It’s not a fear of a fire, or even of death.

This fear, is fear itself. In the only form Dennis knows it.

Hurriedly now he finds himself reaching for the shape of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, bringing it round in front of him to look down at the empty screen. He hadn’t expected any different.

But when he hears the static from a line gone dead he thinks he might scream. But if he screams, he knows he won’t stop. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

He realises his breathes are coming in heavy and fast, hyperventilating like his lungs are a brown paper bag. If this is a panic attack, it’s much bigger than any he’s had before. He can feel his heart like a bloody weight in his chest, thumping like a fist on his ribs. For a brief second he thinks he could die, but then the sound of the bar door opening sounds through the wall.

For a few seconds he daren’t even breathe, eyes shifting side to side as he tries to listen for any further sounds of life, chest pounding.

When he doesn’t get any, his feet have found their way to the back office door and as a drop of sweat beads on his hairline, his clammy hands are already turning the handle.

There’s a figure sat on the end of the bar. Slightly large, round at the edges. Unmistakeably human, yet somehow not.

Dennis finds himself coming closer, slowly trying to focus on the form in front of him which is slowly taking shape.

Despite the fact it’s wearing a pressed suit, the figure sniffs loudly, slovenly like a grunt, wiping its nose on the back of its hand and inspecting it with an amused wrinkle of disgust on his face.

The closer Dennis gets, the more the figure takes form of a man. Short cropped blonde hair, un-styled and unkempt. Broad shoulders and a tall frame covered in a thick layer of fat, obscuring his chin and neck where the head meets the body. It registers.

“Bill?”

The figure looks up suddenly, apparently in as much shock to see Dennis, as Dennis is to see him.

“Dennis?” Bills mouth moves, but for some reason it doesn’t quite sound like him.

“What are you doing here?” the figure continues, eyes sweeping over Dennis’ body as he slowly moves ever closer.

He watches as Bill gives him another once over with wide eyes and a slow nod, before he turns his attention away to his pocket and with the rapid drop of his heart, Dennis realises Bill knows something that he does not.

A handful of notes is smacked down on the bar.

“Beer, please.” 

Yet it’s so obvious.

Bill puts his wallet away before he realises Dennis isn’t moving.

Still as a statue, swollen eyelids and colour-less skin. He raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“They’re gone, Dennis -

they’re never coming back.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a while and thought it was finally time to post. Sometimes I just need to write dark material and the concept for this was focusing on a nightmare. 
> 
> I focused on Dennis because he's my favourite and I had fun exploring my perceptions of his fears and nightmare.
> 
> Please let me know what you thought x I know this won't have been everyone's cup of tea but if you liked it, let me know why (:


End file.
